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The Political Vision of the New Left
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13733 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1988 |
5,509 Words |
| Author
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Larry D. Nachman
Larry D. Nachman is professor of political science at the
College of Staten Island, CUNY, and is a frequent contributor
to Commentary and Salmagundi. He is completing a book on
psychoanalysis and social theory. |
This year, the twentieth anniversary of that climactic year in which the seething forces of a decade of growing radical politics seemed to come to a head, has been the occasion for much revisiting and celebration of what came to be called the American New Left. Nineteen sixty-eight was the year of the Tet offensive and President Johnson's announcement that he would not seek reelection. It saw the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. It was the year of the sit-in that paralyzed Columbia University, and the demonstrations and police overreaction at the Democratic National Convention--at that convention, the coalition created by Franklin Roosevelt fell apart, ultimately propelling the Democratic party far to the left. It was a year in which America held its breath and wondered whether the social cement that held the country together had decayed beyond repair.
Recently, in keeping with the festive spirit of this anniversary year, several hundred participants in the Columbia sit-in returned to their alma mater for a reunion. According to a New York Times report, many still remained loyal to the commitments of their youth. As one of the alumni put it, "These people are still committed. The impulse didn't end. It just scattered." Mark Rudd, a former leader of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and one of the agents of its transformation into the violent Weathermen, paid tribute, in particular, to Ted Gold and Dave Gilbert. Gilbert is serving a long prison sentence for the murder of two guards and a police officer during a Brink's armored car robbery. Gold was killed in a bomb blast that destroyed a West 11th Street brownstone when the bombs he was preparing to use against others detonated. Rudd, reminiscing about the period, provided the quote of the day: "We were completely out of touch with reality. I now believe the Vietnam War drove us crazy." While I have seen worse summations of the decade of the sixties, the mixture of psychology and politics continues to be an important theme of that period.
But it is not nostalgia alone nor even a serious concern for history that demands a thoughtful consideration of the events and ideas of the sixties. The radicals of the New Left have had a deep and enduring effect on American society and politics. Although many who have retained their radicalism regard themselves as marginal in influence and power today, it is less the case that their rhetoric and ideas have been discarded than that they have been assimilated and incorporated into both the form and substance of contemporary political life. The image of America as a corrupt force, unfit to be permitted loose in the world without an international chaperone, is no longer held only by
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